


If you ever leave, my dear

by readeption



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 2000s Politics, Christmas, Keith is a recluse, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, lance is a writer, set in 2005
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-07 03:07:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12832014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readeption/pseuds/readeption
Summary: Lance, a political blogger and journalist, comes to talk to Keith for the obituary of Takashi Shirogane, decorated British-Japanese soldier gone MIA in Iraq.And it goes from there.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> not beta read. title may change. enjoy! :D

The news comes through on the old, grainy television in the living room: a grey-brown space with a plush but stained carpet and a two-seat sofa that has only had one full-time occupant since 2001.

The knock comes through a week later from the other side of the old, grainy front door to Keith’s grey-stone cottage in the Brecon boondocks.

He hasn’t been listening to the radio, and he only went into town once for eggs and ham, so any media firestorm there may have been has completely passed him by. With that said, though, he’s kind of surprised it took so long for someone to come after him.

(That’s how he thinks about it. They’ve come after him; hunted him down; tracked him and trapped him like a critter in a net.)

It’s raining outside, Keith finds when he pulls back the curtain, Rachel Lynde style. And it’s an autumn morning in Wales; his instincts kick up out of hibernation and demand he opens the door to this poor and hapless stranger. (Even if they are a journalist.)

He turns the key in the lock and pulls it to.

The man is shivering, neon green raincoat clearly not much of a defence against October rain; still, he waits on the threadbare doormat for Keith to say, ‘Come in,’ before he steps into the porch and pulls off his boots. Keith wouldn’t have asked him to. He closes the door.

‘Awfully sorry,’ says the stranger. Keith turns round to look at him. He’s loosening his hood and letting it fall back, unzipping his coat.

Tall, wiry, and inexplicably foreign, he stands before Keith in the dimly lit corridor. ‘Lance McClain,’ he says, and extends a hand. ‘Are you Mr Kogane?’

‘Keith,’ mumbles the resident. ‘Just Keith. Are you, uh…’ _A journalist? A vulture? Single?_

‘Yeah, I, uh…’ Lance rubs the back of his neck. ‘I’m writing an obituary? And I was digging? And I found you? So?’ His voice gets squeakier and squeakier. ‘It’s fine if you… it’s fine.’

‘It’s fine,’ says Keith. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

‘Love one,’ says Lance. Keith waits patiently as he goes into the living room and sits down, very gingerly.

‘How do you take it?’

‘Milk, two sugars,’ calls Lance. He has very long legs, Keith spies from the kitchen. He fumbles with the tin of Clippers fairtrade, clatters the cutlery more than usual.

Lance is silent as Keith turns on the gas hob and fills the kettle. Silent as he takes two of the three mugs from the cupboard – looks at the third, the Golden Jubilee one, and feels the icy, fiery panic…

‘Don’t you want to know how I found you?’ asks Lance suddenly as Keith ducks into the fridge for the milk. He shoots back up to look at Lance. Puts the milk on the counter.

‘Uh, sure,’ he says. Lance looks crestfallen. ‘Tell me,’ says Keith. ‘I’m kind of impressed.’

‘Mr Shirogane did an interview several years ago? For the Mirror?’

Keith removes both teabags, adds sugar, then pours the milk into Lance’s tea and dribbles it into his own. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I remember.’ He wraps his hands around his own mug and lowers his head. ‘Are you with the Mirror?’ he asks neutrally.

‘No,’ says Lance, just as neutrally. ‘I’m with the Guardian.’

Keith takes their tea through.

‘Do you have – coasters?’ asks Lance.

‘It’s an old table,’ says Keith blankly.

‘Oh, okay,’ says Lance. ‘I guess it’s… terribly middle-class to have coasters. Anyway.’ He reaches down, peels the waterproof cover off his backpack and opens it up. Notebook. He scrabbles around inside – Keith can hear a lot of stationery – and comes back with a pen. ‘Want to start?’

They iron out the key details, first. Full name, Takashi Shirogane. Born 29th February 1980 in Croydon, died 29th September 2005 outside Baghdad; no wife, no children; closed adoption – ‘Never looked for his birth parents?’ Lance asks; ‘No,’ Keith says – brother to Katherine and Matthew Holt – ‘The same Holts who Arm hired to help make their CPUs?’ Lance asks; ‘Yes,’ Keith says.

‘And guardian to you?’

Keith’s throat tightens up. ‘I suppose,’ he says. ‘The interview… what did he say in that?’

‘That he lived with a close friend and they had a house in the Beacons. Said they went back a long way, both had had rough experiences.’ Lance cocks his head at Keith. ‘I sort of went from there? But he didn’t tell the story, and you obviously haven’t… You don’t have to –‘

‘I want to,’ says Keith. ‘If I don’t tell you then, he’ll just be like any other soldier, won’t he. I mean – there’s nothing _wrong_ with that’ – Lance looks at him sympathetically – ‘but there’s a difference between coincidental and reckless acts of bravery – I guess – and what Shiro was like – cos he was brave always. Kind always.’ Keith scowls at the taupe cushion between him and Lance.

‘What did Shiro do for you?’ asks Lance.

‘Rescued me,’ says Keith. ‘I’d run away from… my bir- … my parents. I was four. Well, I hadn’t – run _away_ , I’d just run somewhere, because, um.’

‘Shiro found you?’

‘Yeah,’ says Keith. ‘He was, what, ten? But he took me to his and he made me wait outside… he nicked food for me. It wasn’t long – it feels like a long time, but it wasn’t long… before the Holts discovered me, and it went from there. It was a miracle, really.’

‘They adopted you?’

‘I guess? We didn’t really talk about it. They set me up in a room with Pidge – Katie – and someone came to see me, asked me to write everything down.’

‘Where does the nickname come from?’

‘Pidge? Matt gave it to her, I think. I never asked.’

‘Are you still in contact with the Holts?’

‘I have their details,’ says Keith. ‘I didn’t want to… I didn’t want to stay there. The reporters must have got to them already.’

Lance nods. ‘I think so,’ he says. ‘But I always got this sense when I saw him on TV, of…’

‘I know what you mean,’ says Keith. He glances at the clock. _Why_ , asks his brain. _You have nothing on all day_.

‘I’m sorry,’ Lance says, putting his empty mug on the stained table.

‘Have you ever lost anyone?’ asks Keith. _Because it’s…_

‘My grandparents,’ Lance says softly. ‘Paternal. They emigrated here in the early sixties. Proper hangers-on. But yeah, just in the past few years.’

‘Where did they emigrate from?’

‘Cuba,’ says Lance. ‘They loved it here, though. But I’ve never been. Have you read _Harry Potter_?’

Keith shakes his head.

‘Seen it? Any of them?’

‘No,’ says Keith. ‘Sorry.’

Lance purses his lips. ‘You should,’ he says. Keith thinks, distinctly, _this person can’t be a journalist._ ‘There’s this bit at the beginning where Harry’s at the zoo and he meets a snake and he can communicate with it. Asks if it’s seen Brazil. It hasn’t. It was bred in captivity.’

‘Oh,’ says Keith, weakly.

‘I’m sorry,’ says Lance, slapping his thighs. ‘I’ve probably overstayed my welcome – and you probably…’ _Need time to grieve_. Keith thinks, _I’ve had enough fucking time_ , and the passion of it disturbs him. He’s not _angry_. But he’s… alone.

‘You can stay, if you want,’ says Keith. ‘Just for a bit. It’s still raining.’ And then he thinks, _Jesus_. ‘Did you _walk here_?’

Lance grins sheepishly. Keith’s stomach flops over.

Eye contact. Keith asks, ‘So are you, like, a journalist, then?’

Lance shrugs. ‘I guess. I’d rather be called like, a political writer, but I _am_ only twenty – not like, Christopher Hitchens.’

‘I hate Christopher Hitchens,’ says Keith.

‘Yeah, me too,’ says Lance quickly. ‘I mean, I have a blog,’ he mumbles.

‘You have a blog?’

‘Yeah?’

‘How long for?’

‘Since 2001…’

‘Awesome,’ says Keith with a grin. ‘Is that how you started?’

Lance nods. ‘It was kind of crazy,’ he said. ‘But I started working and the minimum wage was about three quid but I got even less cos I was Cuban. And I was just _mad_. And my parents are kind of apolitical… I think they voted Lib Dem this year.’ Lance rubs his eyes. ‘They have views, they’re just not as involved as me. But the blog isn’t super political anymore. It’s just a blog.’

‘That’s really cool,’ says Keith.

‘Do you have anything like that?’

‘No,’ says Keith. ‘I don’t like people. And there’s something about writing stuff for an audience I couldn’t see… just nope.’

‘Yeah, but it’s a good audience,’ says Lance, grinning. ‘An audience who want to listen to what you have to say. I’ve met so many awesome people cos of my blog and my work.’

Keith forces a smile. He picks up their mugs and moves to the kitchen.

Lance has that look on his face. It’s one that would normally infuriate Keith. It’s the one people get when they’re itching to ask you something but not sure they’re allowed. Keith thinks of a line from _The Tenant_ ; “I never resented him the freedom”…

_For fuck’s sake_ , says brain-Shiro. _Don’t compare every man you meet to Arthur Huntingdon._

Keith’s heart hurts.

‘Do you want to watch _EastEnders_?’ he asks.

Lance’s face lights up.

‘ _Yes_.’

* * *

After Lance leaves, Keith has a shower and contemplates taking a sledgehammer to the TV. He watches as the rain dribbles away and trickles down the hillsides, leaving them lush and shiny and green.

Then he remembers what Lance said about the blog. _His_ blog.

Keith doesn’t have a computer. Such luxuries are beyond him. If he cared about shit like computers, he couldn’t live in the middle of nowhere like he does. Plus, Shiro’s salary couldn’t stretch to it on top of everything else, Keith’s voracious appetite for books among them. And the upkeep of the house.

Mainly the upkeep of the house.

Keith wants to find Lance’s blog. He wants to find out more about him. He’ll need to go to the library for that.

If Shiro randomly reappears, or telephones, and asks what he’s been up to, what will he say? _I told a journalist about you. Then I stalked the journalist online_. He sighs.

He’ll have to get the bus.

* * *

He Googles him, in the end.

_lance mcclain_

The first – and only proper – result is one of a blog with his name as the title. Keith clicks on it.

_I’m a Cuban kid from Coventry living my best life. Here are some of my recent posts:_

  * _Growing up as a Person of Colour in the Midlands (Synoptic)_
  * _My Thoughts on Gordon Brown_
  * _Solidarity_



It’s all passionate left-wing stuff. Reminds Keith of arguments at secondary school in Peterborough, and the mock election there in 2001.

Keith reads further down. There’s links to an online database of journalists and their articles; Keith reads a handful of them, completely absorbed. The clock ticks over into the next hour, and Keith’s stomach rumbles at Lance’s loving description of his mother’s cooking ( _The Hypocrisy of Racism_ ). It’s almost four when he blinks away from, bizarrely, a page on Lance’s _debut novel_ – and remembers where he is. Rough chair, tight jeans. Lance must be halfway back to Coventry by now.

Lance.

Keith smiles, logs out of the system. Stands and gets his bag.

It’s sunny outside.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two telephone calls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you were one of the first 105 hits on this work, there’s now 350 more words in Chapter One which I added on the 2nd. It’s basically Keith looking at Lance’s blog. Also I changed the dates; instead of Shiro supposedly-dying on the 29th November, and Lance’s first visit being on the 8th December, he now supposedly-died on the 29th September, thus meaning this fic begins on 8th October (a change from the “dead of winter, mid-afternoon” line to “autumn morning”, etc.) – which makes the progression more realistic, honestly.
> 
> Any smut that occurs will be in Ch Five and possibly Ch Eight.
> 
> enjoy :D

Keith comes down in the early morning to the chilly living room. Buoyed by something, unconsciously he goes to the pantry-cum-cupboard and withdraws the vacuum cleaner, giving the room a once-over with it before brushing the dried mud from the carpet and sweeping it outside.

The view from his doorway is a thing to behold. The house is near the top of a smooth, round green hill, neither remarkable; old dark stone and unglazed windows shield Keith, however poorly, from all the wild variations of weather across the Beacons. There are only two other houses visible from his porch; a cottage, similar to his but for the extension and garage, sits further down by the B-road. And on the parent hill across the landscape is a farmhouse, proper big and supporting a few horses, Keith thinks.

He draws the blinds and turns on the radiator. The tiled kitchen floor is freezing and downright painful on his bare feet, but he’s already down here so he tries to ignore it, and puts some tea on. The two mugs from yesterday morning are still on the coffee table; he picks them up and goes to wipe them in the sink. Rinsed and dried with a ratty tea towel, Keith opens the cupboard and puts them back in. And there’s Shiro.

His mug, anyway.

Queen Elizabeth smiles serenely at Keith from the printed china. He looks in her eyes, at her hair, perfectly coiffed and so distinctive. He thinks of Shiro’s hands curling around this mug, thinks of him laughing into it as Keith read him _Cold Comfort Farm_ at the breakfast table when he was home on leave – Keith had given him the copy, in the end, to take back with him – an old one, Penguin, orange and white…

It’s like he’s been stabbed.

* * *

A spate of crying. _He’s not coming back_ , thinks Keith again and again, unstoppably. He’s not gone on leave. He’s – he’s –

Keith feels raw, but calmer. Instead of having a sheet of glass covering a storm, the glass is gone and the storm has dissipated, leaving Keith aware only of his need for oxygen and a throbbing pain in his forehead. He needs water, he needs to wipe his eyes, put some socks on. Watch a film. He sniffs and stands up. His back hurts from leaning against the knobbly drawers; but the tears are gone.

_Perhaps_ , he thinks, shakily, _another cup of tea._

* * *

The cottage has a doorknocker; a black metal lion’s head. You hook your fingers into its jaw. Keith hears it go at just past eight in the morning.

It’s the papergirl. _Of course?_

‘Hey, Eva,’ he says.

‘Hey, Kog,’ she says affectionately, and gives him the local newspaper. ‘Real doozy in there today.’ (She’s very American, Eva.) ‘There’s a rhea on the loose.’

‘A rhea.’

‘It’s a ratite,’ she says. ‘Kind of like an ostrich. Bye, Kog.’ And she hops on her bike and speeds away, with a grace Keith could never muster and a fearlessness he can’t imagine in this world of mud, thick and yellow gorse.

He stays stood there in the doorway, letting all the warm air out.

Walking – as he does now – newspaper lain folded in the porch – is the closest that Keith can get to God. Whoever or whatever created Wales, he thinks, did it with reverent charm. _This is God’s country_. And it doesn’t really need to be. There does not even have to be a capital G. _This is gods country_.

There needn’t be any gods at all. But Keith is cleaner out here in a way he can’t articulate. Even in the cautious morning light and with a lorry from the nearby construction company barrelling down the road through the valley.

He’s self-conscious, though. What on earth would that farmer across the way think if they looked out the window and saw him, thin black blot on the hillside. Just standing. Sensing.

Keith goes back inside.

The telephone is ringing.

It’s Lance.

‘Hi,’ he says gently into the receiver.

‘Hey,’ says Lance. ‘I’ve finished the article and I thought I ought to call and make sure it’s alright.’

‘That’s not normal journalist etiquette, is it?’

‘No,’ says Lance, ‘but I’m not a normal journalist.’

_Smooth_.

‘So would you like to hear it?’ Lance asks. ‘I’ve tried to avoid buzzwords as much as I possibly can. If I take another one out my cover will be blown. They’ll know I’m a Marxist and I’ll be sent to Guantanamo.’

‘You’re not a Marxist,’ Keith says, chuckling. ‘I read your blog. It’s not exactly Militant tendency.’

Lance gasps. ‘You read my blog?’ He sounds delighted.

‘Yeah…?’

‘Sorry, sorry, getting side-tracked. Keith, I’m flattered.’

Heat crawls over his face.

‘Obituary?’ he prompts. Lance obeys. And it’s actually alright.

Better than alright. It’s good.

* * *

‘I just really don’t want you to feel like I’m using you,’ says Lance, anxiously.

And he’s probably right to be worried. Over the darker moments of the past week, Keith considered it. Some journalists are awfully unethical, Keith knows, and it tends to let the whole side down (though using that expression is inaccurate since journalists, Keith also knows, are rarely on the same side). But Keith read Lance’s blog posts; he ordered his book. Lance is _twenty_ , and has done all these things, walked to Keith through the pouring rain just for the _chance_ of enriching an obituary for a man that everyone was already talking about, because he thought, like Keith, that Shiro deserved it.

‘I don’t feel like that at all,’ says Keith, though perhaps he should. ‘Don’t fret.’

‘Can I ask you something?’

A little alarm bell starts to ring somewhere between Keith’s brain and his heart. ‘If you want,’ he says.

‘Why do you live on your own? You can’t be older than me. And surely the Holts would take you in.’

Keith doesn’t answer, and into the silence Lance jumps like a jackrabbit. ‘I’m sorry! I know it’s none of my business. I’ve just never met anyone like you before.’

Keith feels something weird in his chest. It makes him want to put the phone down. ‘I, um,’ he says. ‘Just.’ _You’re not using me for a story. And I’m not using you as a replacement for Shiro. So what is this? Are you my friend? Am I_ your _friend?_

He supposes this is what having a friend is like. Or maybe it’s just Lance. At the thought, a little ribbon of heat spirals up into his face.

Friends tell the truth, don’t they?

‘I’m just not… that interested,’ he says, ‘in meeting a lot of other people. I don’t feel I really need to.’ Scrutiny is never applied to Keith and he’s not quite sure how to react. Then he thinks, _I don’t need to react at all. I don’t have to have feelings about everything._ ‘I have. I had all the people I need, I don’t…’

Lance says gently, ‘I don’t know anyone our age who lives the way you do.’

‘I like living the way I do,’ says Keith stubbornly. ‘I don’t have to deal with people except when I want to. And the – the countryside. I know you didn’t see it at its best, but in the summer it’s fantastic. I never feel trapped here, or’ – _paranoid_ – ‘… and I just love it.’

‘Yeah,’ says Lance, hushed.

‘Sorry.’

‘No,’ says Lance, ‘it’s me. You don’t know me. I could still be an utter bastard.’

‘The thing is,’ says Keith hoarsely, ‘that I assume everyone is an utter bastard.’

And it goes from there.

* * *

 

The next phone call takes Keith by surprise. Along with several other things.

The obituary in Monday’s _Guardian_ is what he expected. He jumps to it, devours it, and then tears out the crossword. The rest of the paper sits in a heap by the television, which when Lance calls him that Saturday is playing Keith’s VHS of _Sense and Sensibility_. (It’s raining – both on-screen and outside.)

Keith added Lance’s number, so he knows it’s him. He goes to the kitchen, pads the floor in his woolly socks, and picks up. ‘Hi,’ sleepily.

‘Hello!’

Keith grins. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m great,’ says Lance, who sounds it – and Keith _missed_ his voice, whatever that might mean. ‘Did you read it?’

‘In print? Yeah. Bit costly.’ It’s a pet peeve, not a serious complaint. Keith’s fine.

‘High-quality journalism,’ says Lance. ‘The paper, I mean, not my obit.’

‘Thank you,’ Keith says.

Lance is caught off-guard by that. Stutters, ‘Oh – it’s fine – it’s nothing, I mean I know it’s not nothing, but –‘

‘And you didn’t tell anyone where I lived or anything,’ Keith reminds softly.

‘That was just me being selfish,’ argues Lance. ‘Journalists are pretty shit people, you know.’

‘No,’ says Keith. ‘I don’t think they are. At least, no more shit than anyone else.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, if someone’s a shit person, they’re gonna be shit whatever they do. Whatever career path they take. So you get shit teachers and shit politicians but you also get good ones. And you get good journalists. Like you.’

There’s a pause, then. ‘Thanks. Wait a second, I have to go upstairs. I’m blushing.’

Keith feels a pressure in his throat to huff out a laugh, but resists. ‘Cute,’ he says, and imagines Lance nearly dropping the phone.

‘I wanna get to know you, Keith,’ Lance says suddenly. ‘What are you interested in?’

‘Books,’ says Keith. ‘Nineteenth and early twentieth century classics.’

‘Which is why you haven’t read _Harry Potter_.’

‘ _Hey_ ,’ says Keith defensively. ‘I’m going to!’

‘Are you?’ Lance sounds delighted. ‘Awesome! I mean, I could lend you mine. They’re a bit dog-eared.’

‘That would be good,’ says Keith, filled with warmth at the prospect of seeing Lance again. ‘But yeah. Austen. Um. Graham Greene. Daphne du Maurier.’

‘She wrote _Rebecca_ , didn’t she?’

‘I haven’t read it, but yeah. I’ve read _Jamaica Inn_. It’s this brilliant, dramatic story. As is _Brighton Rock_ by Greene. Have you read this stuff?’

‘No, just things like _Superfudge_ ,’ says Lance. ‘I read what was in the library at school.’

‘That’s how it starts,’ says Keith wistfully, jokingly.

Lance’s voice is light with happiness. ‘Can I see you again?’

‘Sure. When were you thinking?’

‘Next Saturday? 22nd? After my deadlines. I’d come earlier otherwise.’

‘I have no life,’ says Keith. ‘You can come whenever you want.’

‘I’ll hold you to that,’ says Lance.

Keith’s brain conjures vividly the image of Lance holding him. It swims in his mind like a dream, a reflection in a funhouse mirror. Warm and –

‘What about films? Hobbies?’

‘Mainly adaptations of the classics,’ says Keith drily. ‘I like watching them and making lists of everything they get wrong.’

‘Like what?’

‘You don’t want my obscure opinions,’ Keith resists. He rubs his eyes with his free hand. ‘I have to…’ He yawns. ‘I’ll have to introduce you to them, sometime, though.’

‘Your opinions?’

‘ _No_. The classics.’

‘Did Shiro like them?’

Keith freezes. Lance accelerates with an apology that Keith stops in its tracks. ‘It’s fine,’ he says. ‘For the most part, he did. Sorry, I just felt like someone had dropped an ice cube down my back.’

‘Sorry,’ says Lance quietly.

‘It’s okay,’ says Keith. ‘I don’t mind talking about him.’

‘I wish I was there,’ says Lance, abrupt but mild, and electrifies Keith.

‘Yeah. I wish you were here too.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the ratite thing inspired by this tweet from Crap Local News, https://twitter.com/CrapLocalNews/status/936569369894752256. 
> 
> (This sort of thing can happen though; me & my mum saw a rhea loose in a field in early 2015. I actually managed to get quite close. Both me and the rhea were rather frightened.)
> 
> The post-Eva prose inspired by this poem: https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1762639/snowdonia/


	3. 22nd October 2005

True to his word, Lance comes on the 22nd. It’s a wet day and he’s here early, looking like a wet chocolate Labrador.

‘I hope you’ve had a good breakfast,’ he says, which is very weird.

‘Hello,’ says Keith. ‘I guess?’

‘We’re going everywhere,’ says Lance, with that gleam of childish excitement in his eye. Keith grins down at him from the doorway, and reaches back to get his coat. ‘We’re driving, bussing, walking.’

‘Bussing?’

‘It’s a valid word.’

‘You’re a valid word,’ Keith mutters as he locks up. Lance guides him down the hill like he’s an OAP who’s lost their Zimmer frame, and they get into a car that smells of old coffee.

Keith loves it.

* * *

‘Here,’ says Lance when Keith shivers for the sixth time in five minutes. ‘Take my jacket.’

‘It’s fine,’ says Keith, rubbing his hands together to generate friction, even though it does nothing for his forearms, the hairs of which are standing up on end like he’s been electrocuted. ‘Really –‘

But Lance is already extending his arm, the ruddy brown jacket whipping around in the wind, and Keith takes it, slightly resentfully. ‘Okay.’ He puts it on. ‘Thank you.’ It’s lost to the furious snarl of horns on the dual carriageway.

They carry on.

* * *

 

They’re in a Brecon tea room. Warm yellow-pink light is lighting the room from the walls and a lamp by the till. It’s very warm; stuffy. Someone else comes in and the resulting gust of freezing air wraps around Keith’s ankles. It’s busy too. Keith can’t see an empty table. People are going upstairs.

‘I really dragged you out of your comfort zone,’ says Lance. Keith looks at him, feeling a vague agitation.

‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘I’m…’ _kind of glad you did_.

* * *

 

The evening light is blue and dimming. They’re near the back, Lance’s long legs stretching out into the gangway. He’s leaning his head on Keith’s shoulder.

‘I like it here,’ he murmurs.

‘I like it here, too.’

He more than likes it. And he doesn’t just like it _here_ – here in Wales, here in the countryside – but here on the bus, wrapped up in the blue evening and the rumble of the engine, and Lance next to him. It’s peaceful.

Keith loves being tired. He doesn’t have to think about anything. And being tired in others’ company is even lovelier; he remembers it from teenage sleepovers with Shiro’s friends.

Lance burrows into his shoulder. ‘Another thing that got me into politics…’ he starts, then yawns.

‘Yeah?’

‘I didn’t know anyone like me growing up,’ he said. Keith thinks, _Cuban?_ Then Lance continues. ‘One of my cousins is. But I felt really alone. Politics connected me to people who understood.’

Keith feels black weight heavy in his stomach. _He_ understands. And Lance must sense it in him. Is it that obvious?

No. It can’t be. They haven’t talked about anything romantic or sexual at all. But maybe that’s how Lance _knows_.

‘And they didn’t talk about it in school, did they,’ Lance mumbles. ‘They weren’t allowed.’

‘No,’ says Keith. His mouth’s dried up.

‘Did Shiro know?’ asks Lance.

‘Mhm.’

‘What was his reaction?’

Keith swallows and tries to remember. ‘I can’t have been more than fifteen when I told him. And I did only tell him. And the age of consent hadn’t been changed yet… or maybe it had, I don’t remember. But I knew I was. Before they changed it. Does your blog know?’

Lance nods. ‘I didn’t want to hide it any longer than I had to.’

‘Your parents?’

‘Yeah, everyone. I moved past the self-hatred stage kind of quickly?’

‘Oh.’

‘It was still difficult, though.’

‘Yeah, of course.’

‘I’m glad I met you,’ says Lance.

‘I’m glad I met you, too.’

* * *

If you were to ask Keith, when he walks in the door, what he’s learned today, he couldn’t give you a straight answer. His mind is pleasantly full of stories, his hands are pleasantly full of pamphlets, little visitors’ guides, flyers for events at this castle or that. He’s seen so many.

‘Anyone would think you’d never seen them before,’ says Lance as they climb the path to the cottage, and Keith is too tired to be reticent.

‘We went round,’ he says, pausing to unlock the door and relishing the warmth, however slight, that greets him from the Aga. ‘We went round a few of them when we first moved here. But we didn’t have long…’ _before Shiro had to leave_.

Keith doesn’t feel guilty for having a nice day. He knows it’s what Shiro would have wanted. But even the most scrumptious cake, the sweetest tea, can’t fill this hole inside him. Not even Lance. Maybe he should apologise, for that. _You’re wasting your time_.

But something hurts at the thought of losing Lance. And Lance would understand, anyway, wouldn’t he? He knows what it’s like. He is so much worldlier than Keith; he can’t possibly have a smaller mind.

He looks at Lance and his eyes smart from the wind. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, faltering.

Keith never knew it could be so easy. That _this_ could be so easy.

To let someone in.

‘It’s okay,’ says Lance. ‘You’re allowed to be sad.’

In the gentle beige corridor, he sees Keith’s lower lip wobble, just slightly, before the man turns around to make some tea.

And Lance thinks, _I could get used to this. I want to get used to this._

* * *

‘You can sleep in my room,’ Keith says when the advent of night is an unavoidable topic of conversation. Lance’s legs are stretched out over his but at the other end of his body he looks like he’s about to drop off, right into the bowl of cornflakes Keith made up for him.

Lance opens his eyes and blinks, slowly, the way a cat does to tell you it loves you.

‘And I’ll stay down here,’ says Keith. ‘But you need to be comfortable. You did most of the walking.’

‘I’ll develop the photographs,’ says Lance. ‘I swear.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Come on. Up you get. Take my hand. The stairs are a nightmare.’

Lance’s hand in his is cool and soft, and Keith wishes he would stop thinking so much about how _long_ Lance is – his fingers, his legs – thinking so much about _Lance_. But it feels nice to. Lance feels nice.

‘I’m tired, too,’ Keith says when they reach the top. ‘There you go.’

‘Wow,’ says Lance.

It’s an understatement.

Keith’s room is very full, very busy. There’s a window on one side, surrounded entirely by bookshelves. In the dim light Lance can’t make any of the titles out. On the other wall there’s a corkboard with a handful of pictures: a pencil sketch someone else must have done of Keith on rough paper; a picture of a younger – though still mullet-haired – Keith with Shiro and the auburn Holts, bedecked in Christmas jumpers. A postcard from Istanbul, the Hagia Sophia.

But the back wall (to Lance’s left as he walks in, and opposite the bed nestled as an afterthought between wardrobe and end table, with a thick dark blue duvet) is taken up entirely by a huge and incredibly detailed sketch of an aeroplane – something early, between a biplane and a Spitfire – pencil and emblazoned, however meekly at the end of one wing, with the Welsh dragon.

‘Wow,’ says Lance. ‘This is some _Castle in the Sky_ shit.’

He turns back and Keith is gone.

‘Oh.’

Lance swallows and goes over to the window. He looks out over the hills and feels a rip of sympathetic loneliness. He draws the curtains and closes the door, listening for Keith pottering about downstairs but hearing nothing.

Cautiously, and anticipating Keith’s return with hot chocolate or pyjamas, he sits in bed and undoes his jeans. Pulls his jumper up over his head and nestles himself under the duvet in his vest and boxers. It’s a cold room.

Keith isn’t coming back. Lance wishes he would. He’s shivering – he reaches down for the jumper again and puts it back on – this isn’t Coventry, it never will be. If Keith came up now, he could get into the bed. It’s tiny. They would have to be practically on top of each other. It would be so warm. Lance would be able to smell him, not diluted in the freezing wind or joining a medley of them in a tea shop.

He only wants Keith.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Section 28 came into Scottish, English and Welsh law in 1988. It was repealed in Scotland in 2000 and in England and Wales in 2003. The age of consent was equalised to 16 at the beginning of 2001. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_United_Kingdom)


End file.
